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Fanfiction views Irony
Fanfiction views Irony
#1
Just received this since I'm doing nanowrimo this year:
[A Pep talk from Mercedes Lackey]

Dear Writer,
I can't think of anything more intimidating than a blank page. Especially the first blank page of a new project. Now, after twenty-mumble years of writing, I have a lot of things to get me past that, one of which is to use the screenplay writing technique of the late Blake Snyder---you can find all of that in his book, Save the Cat! And on the website dedicated to his techniques.  
And these things work really, really well if you already have the basic plot idea and the characters and world in your head.
But what if you don't? What if all you have is a plot?
This is where I am going to deviate from practically anyone you have ever heard from, and tell you this: try writing fanfiction.
For those of you who don't know what fanfiction is, it's pretty simple, and I would bet that you have vaguely thought about doing something like it without ever realizing it. It goes like this: you see a movie or read a book or even play a game, something you really love, but when you're done the first thing that pops into your head is "But what if they had done---" or "And then what happened?" or "Gee if there had been a character like this---"
Fanfiction is taking an existing world, and possibly even some of the characters, and writing your own stories in it. And it is a lot less intimidating than making everything else up for yourself (especially when you're talking about fantasy, science fiction, or horror). Now I am not advocating that you do this with the idea of selling the thing, (though more on that later), because that's called plagiarism and it's illegal. And there are writers and publishing companies that don't allow fanfiction to be published in any form, even on the web, so you have to be very careful about that.
But for purposes of practice? It's fun, it's going to give you a giant kick-start, and you would be surprised at how many professionals started out that way (and still do it!). Well just as an example, go have a look at all the Star Trek, Star Wars, and game-based books there are out there. If you reduce things to principles, most of those are fanfiction---fanfiction commissioned by and given the blessing of the publisher, and produced by professionals, yes, but still fanfiction.
And there are those of us professionals that still write fanfiction for fun (although I doubt there are very few who will be as up-front about it as I am).  Sometimes it's because someone else's creation got us by the throat and our storytelling demon won't let us go until we get our version down on paper or in pixels. Sometimes it's because it's not the genre we make our bread and butter at. Me, for instance; I got involved with a small group of folks in the City of Heroes superhero MMORPG (www.cityofheroes.com) and we were all driven to write fiction about the characters we played. I did that for a couple of years until an even smaller group of us decided to take those characters, create a new setting for them, and see if we could write some real books around them. That became The Secret World Chronicle, which is in podcast form at the website above, and will be a series of books coming from Baen starting in March. So you can see that what sta rts out as fanfiction can, once you get your practice in, turn into a real, marketable project!
But the point is you have to get that practice in first---and NaNoWriMo is one of the best forums for that, just as fanfiction can be one of many platforms for you to launch from. If that's the route you want to go, bravo! Let your fanfic flag fly!  You’ll be following in the footsteps of a lot of greats, like Marion Zimmer Bradley (who wrote Tolkien fanfic)!
Now get out there and conquer that blank page!

Mercedes Lackey

 

Mercedes Lackey has over eighty books in print, with four being published in 2010 alone. You can learn more about her writing and other work at www.mercedeslackey.com and www.secretworldchronicle.com.

Is it just me or can everyone see the irony here ?
-People may die, but ideas are forever. Je suis Charlie.
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#2
Not really. After all, her official position on fanfic has relaxed significantly from what it once was.

Actually, being on record as saying, in essence, that as long as people don't do the stupid things they shouldn't do with fanfic... That'd put her above a lot of authors.

-Morgan, didn't cherry-pick that link either, it was the first thing that came up on google...
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#3
Do you mean the sixty-foot tall irony screaming out further irony at 120 decibels?

Nope, can't see it.
Seriously, as Morganni notes above, Lackey's stance on fanfic changed about a year ago.  But to be absolutely fair, it was her agent who was behind her draconian stance before, not her.  She came out of the fan community, after all -- I wouldn't be surprised if she personally felt differently but decided it was in her better interests to follow her agent's lead.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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#4
Wasn't her entire stance based around some weird experience she had?
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#5
AIR, it came out of accusations from one fan that Marion Zimmer Bradley had 'stolen' an idea she'd used in a fanfic for one of her novels. That combined with the utter insanity of some of Lackey's early fandom (stalkeriffic), and you can see that she might have been a bit leery.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
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#6
Is this posted anywhere official-ish? I can't find it on her website. I would like to share it with some others but I prefer to source my quotes.
----------------
Epsilon
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#7
I'll have to see if I can dig up the links from when I did an essay on fanfic a few years ago (I thought 'gee, it would be fun to do a paper on fanfic, but I doubt there are articles on it in scholarly sources... Oh what the heck, I'll do a search on EBSCO just for giggles and then... Wait... Is that an actual article on fanfic in the Georgetown Law Review?), but from what I recall a bit of digging brought me to the conclusion that like many other events the "Great Darkover Novel Killing Fanfic" has been greatly exaggerated over time.

Let's see...

A Making Light discussion thread touches on the Marion Zimmer Bradley 'fanfic' case. Linked to a good spot to start (Doing a Firefox search & highlight on Bradley seems to help filter for the relevant comments)

A post claiming to be from the other author in the Marion Zimmer Bradley case.

And for fun... The article that made me realize I might be able to get enough acceptable articles to do an English paper on the subject. Legal Fictions: Copyright, Fan Fiction, and a New Common Law, by then student Rebecca Tushnet, now professor of Law at Georgetown, and one of the people involved in starting up the OTW.
-----

Will the transhumanist future have catgirls? Does Japan still exist? Well, there is your answer.
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#8
Interesting. That's considerably different from the account which lived on Lackey's website for so many years.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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#9
Doesn't this mean you can now post DW1?
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#10
He'd have to write the silly thing first...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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#11
Actually, Chris, DWI's been back on the active project list since the beginning of the year, because Lackey relaxed her stand on fanfic. I've actually done some new development work on it, mainly to replace the prologue (which I used for DW2).
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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#12
http://www.webscription.n...ret-world-chronicle.aspx

Baen Books publishes Mercedes Lackey's City of Heroes fanfic, after suitable serial-number-removal.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
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#13
*GUFFAW*

awesome.
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies
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